Computing Equilibrium Wealth Distributions in Models with Heterogeneous-Agents, Incomplete Markets and Idiosyncratic Risk

Abstract

This paper describes an accurate, fast and robust fixed point method for computing the stationary wealth distributions in macroeconomic models with a continuum of infinitely-lived households who face idiosyncratic shocks with aggregate certainty. The household wealth evolution is modeled as a mixture Markov process and the stationary wealth distributions are obtained using eigen structures of transition matrices by enforcing the conditions for the Perron–Frobenius theorem by adding a perturbation constant to the Markov transition matrix. This step is utilized repeatedly within a binary search algorithm to find the equilibrium state of the system. The algorithm suggests an efficient and reliable framework for studying dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with heterogeneous agents.